Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

Samara's case was, as it was in almost every other respect, different. It defied repair. It was almost as though it had taken on a life of its own at some point, a willful ness, and was intent on proving to Jaywalker that whatever he did and however he did it, it didn't matter; the evidence would change, mutate, morph and reinvent itself in order to defeat him. Look at how he'd proposed not one but four possible suspects for the jury to consider. Back comes De tective Roger Ramseyer to blow them all out of the water with new fingerprint checks. And Samara. Just when it had looked as though she'd survived the worst of Tom Burke's cross-examination, up pops the fourteen-year-old incident to make her look like a serial stabber.

It was even happening now with Jaywalker's summa tion. He'd promised the jurors in his opening that it would be the very strength of the prosecution's case that would point them to the realization that someone had to be framing Samara. Well, he'd been right about the first part of the equation. The evidence against Samara was over whelming, more overwhelming than even Jaywalker could have imagined. But the second part was missing in action. Nowhere did the evidence break down of its own weight; nowhere did it reveal meaningful cracks or gaps that in any way suggested innocence on Samara's part or guilt on anyone else's.

So what did you do when you couldn't sum up?

It was a question Jaywalker had never been forced to answer before, not in more than twenty years of trying cases. And even as it occurred to him, he forced himself to ignore it. There had to be a way to win this case, there simply had to be. It was just a matter of his not having figured it out yet. It was just a matter of time.

Something he was rapidly running out of.

Jaywalker arrived at the courthouse neurotically early, as he always did on summation day. He showed up drawn, pale, gaunt and tired. But inside, he was pumped on adren aline. Over the past two weeks, he'd slept an average of three hours a night and had lost a total of seventeen pounds. His good-luck suit hung loosely enough on him by now that, had he wanted to, he could have had the buttons moved and worn it double-breasted. His hair was combed, more or less, and he was clean-shaven, but even shaving had extracted its price. Jaywalker shaved two hundred and fifty times a year without incident. (He took weekends and holidays off.) He could shave with one eye closed. Hell, he could have shaved with both eyes closed, if he'd had to. But on summation day, he always managed to cut himself and then to bleed like a hemophiliac. Always. One time he'd had to sum up with tiny pieces of toilet tissue stuck to his chin and neck, in order to keep from bleeding onto his shirt and tie, his notes, or even the jurors in the front row of the box. They'd acquitted his client, they told him afterward, not so much because they'd doubted his guilt, but because they'd been afraid that a conviction might have pushed Jaywalker over the line, and made him go home and finish the job.

Chances were they'd only been kidding. Then again, did it really matter? An acquittal was an acquittal in Jay walker's book, and he wasn't about to apologize for it.

The courtroom was packed by the time Jaywalker entered. More of the media were on hand than during the testimony itself. Summations were easy for the press; they produced ready-made sound bites, perfect for the evening news or the following morning's print columns. And from the beginning, this case had had everything. A beautiful young woman from an obscure, impoverished past. Dark hints of sex abuse, persistent rumors of prostitution, veiled accusations of gold digging. A much older man, eccentric, powerful, fabulously wealthy, three times married and three times divorced. Sprinkle in generous measures of in fidelity, jealousy and humiliation. Take one fatal stabbing to the heart. Add a murder weapon, hidden and found in the wife's home, stained with the husband's blood. Stir until a perfect motive reveals itself. And, just before serv ing, finish it off with an old secret, newly unearthed, a dark secret of rape and revenge.

Even the lawyers, it seemed, had been perfectly cast for their parts. An earnest young prosecutor who'd worked his way up in one of the best offices in the country, without having checked his good nature or sense of proportion at the courtroom door. Against him, an iconoclastic, rulebreaking veteran with a reputation for being among the very best in the business, particularly when it came time to sum up. And there would be no two-day Johnnie Coch rane filibuster from him. Whatever he had to say, they knew, Jaywalker could be counted on to compact it into the morning session and then sit down. They knew it not because he'd confided in them that he would, but because he'd always kept it short. He was hardly one of their darlings, Jaywalker. He might be ten times the lawyer that some of them were, but he would never sit for an interview, tip them off to his trial strategy, or say something clever when a microphone was shoved in his face. Still, he was a winner, and the public loved winners.

Yet this time there was even more.

The media had long ago learned of Jaywalker's difficul ties with the disciplinary committee. His suspension had actually appeared in print, though only buried deep in the pages of the New York Law Journal, a daily whose circu lation, beyond actual members of the bar, ranked it right up there with such heralded publications as Klezmer Music Enthusiast, Tadpole Lovers' World and The Big Apple Alternate-Side-of-the-Street-Parking Almanac. As the be ginning of Samara's trial had drawn near, Judge Sobel had circulated a request among the media, asking them to refrain from reporting on Jaywalker's suspension and the facts underlying it, including one particular event said to have occurred in a stairwell of the very courthouse where the main drama was to be played out. The media had grudgingly complied, on the proviso that the moment the jurors were sequestered to begin their deliberations-and presumably insulated from the news-the media could run with the story in all its sordid details. So tonight's commen taries and tomorrow's articles would be assured of having yet one more enticing garnish to top them off, a juicy bit of dirt about one of the key players.

Nothing like a little human interest to give a lift to an otherwise flaccid story.

The butterflies were back.

Even before he took his seat at the defense table, a good twenty minutes before the judge took the bench, Jaywalker could feel them beginning to stir. It was almost as though they had ears and knew to begin beating their wings as soon as the clerk said, "All rise!" or the judge announced, "Bring in the jury." As if on cue, they would take flight then, hun dreds of them, thousands of them. They absolutely tortured Jaywalker, causing an excruciating sensation to his mid section, filling his ears with a high-pitched ringing sound and pushing him to the very edge of nausea. But they fueled him, too, the butterflies did. And in a very real sense, they made him what he was.

Judge Sobel spent a few minutes telling the jurors what summations were. Mostly he told them what they weren't: evidence. Jaywalker wasn't overly fond of that particular instruction. Had it been up to him, he would have dis pensed with the evidence altogether and had the jurors instead decide the case purely on the basis of the summa tions. Particularly Samara's case.

Now the judge turned from the jury box to the defense table. "Mr. Jaywalker," he said. Nothing more, nothing less.

By the time he would sit down again, Jaywalker would have spoken to the jurors for close to two and a half hours, without a break and without glancing at his notes more than once or twice, just to make sure he hadn't left anything out. He reminded them what they'd learned as far back as jury selection, that it wasn't their job to figure out whether or not Samara had killed her husband; it was their job to decide if the prosecution had proved that she had, and had proved it beyond all reasonable doubt. He pointed out how totally different those two jobs were.